


λευκόπους

by ahala



Category: Ancient History RPF, Julius Caesar - Shakespeare
Genre: Anxiety Disorder, Childhood, Drabble, F/M, Family Dynamics, Gen, Injury, i wrote this in an hour You Have Been Warned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-03
Updated: 2020-02-03
Packaged: 2021-02-19 03:49:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22538065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ahala/pseuds/ahala
Summary: i was inspired by brutus’s anxiety surrounding injury which caepio talks about in chapter 6 of male me marem putatis so this is one of those childhood memories i suppose :)
Relationships: Julius Caesar/Servilia of the Junii
Comments: 1
Kudos: 7





	λευκόπους

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Caepio](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caepio/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Male Me Marem Putatis](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18774865) by [Caepio](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caepio/pseuds/Caepio). 



The sun was almost hot, glittering down from the heavens in rays of early spring warmth, making the fields of emerald grass and wildflowers of ruby and topaz shudder together. The soil was still cool, as was the wind that whistled down from the jutting mountains and dove into the vast midnight waves with whitecaps of starlight. 

Two shapes moved about on the grassy knoll just before the sand of the beach began, stretching into the onslaught of cool sea foam. Orange peels and bread crumbs from a noontime meal were littered among play swords and a clutch of seashells a ways from where a man and boy threw a ball back and forth. They chattered among one another (“Tell me the pirate story.” “Again?”) and made their way gradually from the grass to the shore and back as the warm blue sky and the briny sea breeze willed them.

“This one’s going to be far,” warned the man. He wound up and threw the ball as hard as he could. The boy spotted it among the afternoon sky and began to sprint down the field, bare feet shushing on the cool ground, wiry limbs pumping. He crumpled into the grass suddenly and the ball fell a few yards from him. He twisted up to sit quickly, studying one of his legs intently. Caesar held his hand to his brow to shield his gaze from the sunlight growing ever warmer as its rays lengthened. He jogged to him.

Brutus’s face was stricken and sallow. Even the sunburn he had accumulated throughout the day had fled from his cheeks. Caesar knelt beside him in the grass. A shard of glass stained with blood protruded from his foot, which was outstretched on the dirt. The rise and fall of Brutus’s thin chest began to quicken and tears gathered in his wide eyes. Caesar reached over and ruffled his hair, looking around himself for more glass before he sat. “Hey, now, none of that,” he soothed. “It’s just a little scratch.” He took Brutus’s foot and rested it in his lap. “I’ll have this out before you can feel a thing.”

The boy jerked away suddenly, pulling his leg to himself without a care for the glass embedded in his skin. “No, it’s fine!” 

“It needs to come out, Marcus,” Caesar reasoned calmly. Brutus struggled to his feet. The tears in his eyes had been quickly soaked up by his terror. Brutus tried to away, just for his leg to give out once more when he tried to put weight on his foot. Caesar snatched him before he could fall again and scooped him up in his arms. “ _ Easy _ , Proserpina,” Caesar teased, though the joke was lost on the panicking boy. “We’re going home, not to the Underworld. You can live your life with glass in your foot, I suppose, but it won’t be a very long one.” It was a quick walk back to the villa beyond the grassy knoll, the two wooden swords left forgotten on the beach.

He shouldered his way in through the door, careful not to hit Brutus’s foot against it.

“What happened?” Servilia demanded, hardly shaken through her imperious calm. She stood quickly and made way for Caesar, who groaned as he set Brutus down on the chaise she had just been resting on.

“Nothing serious,” he assured. “Just an unlucky piece of glass.” Brutus pulled at the threads on the sofa and efficiently began to tear them out. Caesar spoke to her, his voice low. “I think he would prefer your help.” 

She nodded thoughtfully and sat once more. Servilia reached over and pulled Brutus’s hands from the chaise and, with a gentle squeeze, set them on his stomach. His nostrils flared nervously. “Can I see your foot?” She asked. He nodded terse. She took his ankle and angled his foot to face her. Servilia’s brow furrowed and she studied it closely before resting it in her lap with no care to the blood staining the pretty verdant of her dress. She put her thumbs on either side of the gash and pulled it apart gingerly to better see the wound. Brutus whimpered like some sort of feral animal, breathing hotly. Servilia tried to shush him, but it wasn’t enough to keep him from yanking his foot away, flicking crimson onto the couch. She grabbed him again with a mother’s unforgiving roughness and took hold of the shard as best as she could. But Brutus, in his flailing, managed to escape her once more and allow the sharp edge of the glass to worsen the laceration. Had she been a fisherman, practiced with holding tight to the slipperiest of catches, she might have been better equipped to strongarm her son. 

“I’m sorry, Mother, I can’t,” he stammered, eyes squinted shut. 

Servilia gave a sigh laden with such disappointment it made Caesar wince as he met her gaze. They exchanged words silently and she resolved to call a slave to summon the physician and a horn of opium. 

The opium returned quickly, the physician took his time. He was an old man with a balding head with peachlike hair, and a large Grecian nose protruding from his face and long spindly fingers with knobby joints and callouses from sawing off bones. Brutus fixed him with a glare. Servilia pinched him and his gaze eased. His slave, a boy about Brutus’s age, opened the physician’s bag and handed him supplies as he ordered them. The physician measured out a thick, syrupy cup of liquid and handed it to Brutus. “Πῖνε,” he ordered. Brutus drank and nervously turned the cup in his hands. Servilia took the cup from him and replaced it with her own smooth hands. 

“Oh,” he said.

“What is it?” 

“That feels…” he mumbled and let his head fall back hard against the singular arm of the chaise. He looked past his mother to Caesar, who stood in the threshold of the atrium below the mezzanine, and remembered his shells left in the cleft of a sandy footstep. Thought to ask for them to be fetched, but the pulse of the waves and the throb of his foot were the last things he knew before a heady darkness overtook him like sea foam dragging sand out to sea. 


End file.
